He noticed her one day, he couldn’t recall exactly when, but he saw her just standing there looking at the display in his window. She stood very still, just moving her head in a fluid arc across each item.
He had a small antique shop, hidden down one of the quaint smaller streets in the city. It still retained the old fashioned shop front, a bay window, bowed outwards with small panes of glass held inside a crisscross of a dark wooden frame.
He specialised in smaller items; jewellery, gifts, trinkets. He liked them. They were personal. They had a history, a story that in his mind was always more complex and beautiful than the object itself. He liked that about them. They were more than they appeared, as long as you took a moment to consider them. And that was why he noticed her.
He had lots of people pass by the shop, a few who would pause at the window, fewer still who would venture inside the dark but comforting interior.
He had considered several times whether it was time to close the shop, find something new. But he couldn’t bare the thought of all his little wonders being sold off in some faceless auction. So he persevered, doing what he could to keep the shop going.
One way he did this was to change the display each day. Creating a different theme or collection each day around one main piece. It took time but it was a labour of love and it made him feel closer to each item.
He would have the stories running and changing through his mind as he set each of them out in the small window.
But no matter how much he worked on the display, so few people stopped, so few actually noticed the work he put in. And that was why he noticed her. She would pause longer than anyone else. No matter the time of day that she walked past or the display he had chosen, she would always stop and pause to take in the display.
Over time he came to look forward to her visits, to admire her slight petite frame standing there, quiet and still. She always had a slight smile on her face as she looked through the glass.
He began to change the display with her in mind. To see what items would make her linger that little bit longer. He would think about the display and her, just before he went to sleep, pondering which piece would catch her attention.
And so started their strange relationship, if you can call it that. His careful selection of the day’s display. Her thoughtful perusal of the items he had selected. He would then wait for her, finally watching this girl stand outside the window.
She would never enter the shop. Just look at the window. He wondered about her story, in much the same way he wondered about the story of each little antique that he put in the window for her.
Why did she stop each day? Where had she been? Where was she going? Why did she have the time to take so much time at the window? Thoughts would flow at the questions but he never had an answer.
He was a shy quiet man, almost afraid to engage with the customers when they did deem to enter his shop. If he thought about it, he would probably have realised that was one of the reasons that he stayed here. It was quiet, dark, safe.
And so he never went out to talk to her. He never had the strength to go and ask her why she stopped there every day but never came in. Instead he would study her, hidden at the back of the shop.
He noticed the grace with which she held herself, even while just standing still. She seemed to have an elegance, a deportment that others did not. He wondered why but of course he never asked.
She came to the shop early one day, only moments after he had set out his display. He hurried to the back of the shop to watch and as he did, he saw the transformation of her features as her eyes alighted on the centre piece.
